Book: The man-eating tiger of Yeleswaram - and other tales from my Indian childhood by Rajesh Valluri

Rajesh Valluri

about this book: When the westerners think of tigers, snakes, deer, they invariably think of zoos and may be the animal planet. The people of India have a completely different outlook when it comes to things like these. As kids who were raised in certain parts of rural India, we practically grew up with such animals living in our backyards. There are tons of interesting encounters with these animals, and tall tales we were told by our elders. This is a collection of some of those stories.

There is the story of a Monkey who wanted to show its gratitude to a bus driver who saved its life. What about the homeless man who specializes in catching venomous snakes in peoples homes? Then there is the story of a cocky zamindar whose risky bet cost him everything!!

Indian villages are an intriguing cornucopia of life's varied experiences. There is the good, definitely the bad, and sometimes plain absurd. From that comes generations of folklore which can range from being an amusing anecdote, to a silly hyperbole, to downright creepy.

Here is a collection of some of my own recollections, stories that unfolded in-front of my very eyes, stories I know for a fact are plain fiction, and then some too fantastic to be true, but true none-the-less.